


Half Dead And Still Here

by Insert_Creative_Name_Here



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Anyway uh, Canon Compliant, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, No Beta We Die Like Fives, Post-Episode: s03e18 The Citadel, but hey not everything can be perfect, hey that's topical, i'm not all that happy with this, let him mourn you heathens, what we should've seen out of Fives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29593650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insert_Creative_Name_Here/pseuds/Insert_Creative_Name_Here
Summary: The shuttle explodes, and Fives' heart - his world - stops.
Relationships: CT-21-0408 | CT-1409 | Echo & CT-27-5555 | ARC-5555 | Fives, CT-27-5555 | ARC-5555 | Fives & CT-7567 | Rex
Comments: 33
Kudos: 40





	Half Dead And Still Here

**Author's Note:**

> School's about to start seriously kicking my ass so this might be the last thing you get from me for a few weeks, but I'll be back. I've got a bunch of things planned.
> 
> Mando'a translations in the end notes.

The shuttle explodes, and Fives' heart - his world - stops.

" _Echo!_ " he hears himself scream. He feels himself run forward, feels Rex's hand on his shoulder holding him back, hears Rex's whispered apologies, reassurances; but it's all coming from a million miles away because Echo's helmet rolls across the ground towards him.

Just his helmet.

Fives isn't crying. His face isn't wet and his vision isn't blurry because this _isn't real._ It can't be. They've always been Fives and Echo, Echo and Fives, and this can't be real because then he'd be _just Fives_ , and that doesn't work.

Rex is pulling him away from the shuttle, and Fives fights him, tries to break out of his grasp because they need to go back, because Echo isn't dead, because they can _save him-_

But Rex pulls him over the ridge, and Fives feels half of himself die.

* * *

Fives' hands are shaking when he steps off of the transport ship bringing them back to the _Resolute._

Kix - always the stalwart medic - fusses over him, Rex, Skywalker, and Ahsoka as soon as they touch the floor of the _Resolute_. Fives makes sure that he's in the middle of the pack when he leaves, so that no one will see that Echo isn't there-

It doesn't work.

Jesse looks at him, and Fives can feel his gaze piercing through his skull even though he has his helmet on.

Kix moves on from examining Rex to Fives, and Fives can tell that only the lens of forced medical professionalism stops him from doing a double take, because there's no one at Fives' right side.

"Are you okay?" Kix asks, even though they both know that's a stupid question.

Fives doesn't answer, because what is there to say? What words are there to describe how he's feeling right now?

His hands shake so hard that they tap against his thigh, and the whole room has to have noticed, now.

"I'll come back," Kix says.

Jesse walks up to him, and Fives glances around to see that he's the only one still standing by the gangplank - when had that happened?

"Fives," Jesse says, his expression full of pity, and Fives knows that he's just trying to help, but an emotional conversation is the last thing he wants right now.

He pushes past Jesse and walks out of the room. He can feel everyone's gazes on him as he leaves, and he finally knows what Echo means - meant - when he says that the whole world is staring at him and it hurts.

* * *

Fives has been walking around the ship for hours. His feet would be killing him if he could care enough to notice.

He can't stop walking. If he stops, then people are going to look at him with those pitying glances, eyes full of sorrow, and they're expecting him to be angry but he isn't because he just feels empty.

He just wants Echo back.

He feels like that isn't too much to ask.

So he walks. Fives avoids the mess hall, and the barracks, and the training rooms, instead sticking to the back and the bottom of the ship, where there's no one to see him so messed up.

He hasn't cried, and yet he feels like he's out of tears.

Fives' directionless wandering takes him to a darkened corner of the ship, the bottom of the walls covered in blue pain save for three handprints. Fives and Echo's memorial for Domino Squad.

He'll have to add Echo to it, because Echo is with Hevy, Cutup, and Droidbait now. Nothing but a memory. Past tense. Gone.

Fives' knees buckle and he falls to the floor.

He's shaking, he realizes distantly, his body raking with silent sobs because the real ones won't _kriffing_ come. He rests his head against the wall where he knows he's going to put Echo's hand print and he gasps, squeezes his eyes shut, forces sobs, _anything_ to make himself cry.

Echo already took his voice and his common sense and his world, when Rex pulled Fives away. He can't have taken Fives' heart, too.

"Fives?" someone says from behind him. Maybe if Fives doesn't acknowledge them, they'll leave.

Then there's footsteps coming closer to him, and Fives turns around to see Rex, and for a split second Fives is almost overtaken by the urge to lunge forward and punch him, to scream in his face that it isn't fair, that they could have saved Echo if Rex hadn't pulled him away.

Then he sees Rex's face, and the urge leaves him because Rex has obviously been crying, and he's looking at Fives not with pity, but sadness for himself.

He's lost Echo too.

"Fives," Rex says again, gentler. "Can I hug you?"

Fives wants to say _yes, please do, I need something that's real and out of my head,_ but he can't. He nods, instead.

"Okay," Rex says, and kneels down to wrap Fives in a hug, pressing Fives' face into his shoulder.

"I know it's hard to lose someone," Rex says. "but I need you to know that you aren't alone. You have Kix and Jesse, and you have me. And I know you're feeling empty, and I know it feels like the world just ended, but it hasn't, and this isn't going to last forever. You're going to get through this. I know you will. If not for your sake, then for Echo's. You're going to put yourself together, but for now you can break down. I've got you. It's over, and you're safe."

Rex, as always, knows exactly what to say.

Fives sobs, tears finally coming as he lets himself shake apart in Rex's arms.

And a year later, when he's slipping away from life in Rex's arms, when he can see the halls of the _Manda_ in the distance, all he can think is that he's going to see Echo again.

Rex is begging him to stay - Fives has never seen him beg before - but he's already gone.

Fives expects _something_ when he dies. No trumpet fanfare, no ambushes from his _vod'e_ , nothing like that. He expects for the missing half of him to return, for him to feel _whole_ again.

That doesn't happen, and as he explores the _Manda_ , he realizes why.

Echo isn't here. He isn't dead.

And just like that, his world ends all over again.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr at elipson. Come say hi!
> 
> Mando'a Translations:  
> Manda - the Mandalorian afterlife  
> vod'e - siblings
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!


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